This is a revision and update of this post, incorporating some items I’d overlooked the first time around (and with thanks to commenters who reminded me about some of them). Thus, I present: the Revised Guide to Holy Paladin Consumables.

Two things to note:

I’m recommending consumables that give you a good balance of stats, where feasible. If you’re very well-geared in one area and need to boost a specific stat, you can make your own choices.

My recommendations are specific for holy paladins. If you’re a priest, all those +Spirit consumables I wrote off are great for you. If you’re a protection paladin trying to heal, anything with spell crit is relatively useless and you’re looking for all the mp5 you can get. Et cetera.

Elixirs: Battle Elixirs

Adept’s Elixir – the increase to spelldamage is irrelevant, but this elixir gives a boost to both throughput and mana restoration. For holy paladins, this one’s a show-stopper.

Elixir of Healing Power – this one’s a good alternative for situations where you just need healing oomph, and nuts to the regen. In other situations, it’s inferior to Adept’s Elixir, but better than nothing.

Brilliant Mana Oil – arguably the best choice, with a balance of mp5 and +heal. Unfortunately it’s an old-world recipe (requiring Zandalar faction). Brilliant Wizard Oil is a good alternative for paladins seeking crit rather than mp5, also requiring Zandalar faction to learn.

Superior Mana Oil – inferior to the Brilliant Mana Oil, but much more readily available. Superior Wizard Oil is also a good option; although the tooltip says “spell damage”, it does apply to healing as well.

Foods

Blackened Sporefish – for mana regen and survivability. The mp5 boost is small enough, though, that this is on-par with:

Golden Fishsticks – which has a really good healing buff. The Spirit is useless for paladins, but 44 +Heal alone is nothing to sneeze at.

Skullfish Soup – slightly weaker for most healadins than the other two buff foods, as it gives less than 1% crit which is weaker than 44 Heal or 8 mp5 unless you’re really into crit-stacking. Still better than nothing, though!

Any stamina food, such as Feltail Delight (which is the one I use most often). The spirit does little for a paladin, but an extra 300 health is always welcome, and 20 Stamina foods are common enough that you should keep this up pretty much all the time unless you need one of the better food buffs for a boss fight.

Potions

I won’t list them all, as one of my earliest blog posts was a guide to mana and healing potion types; however, these are the ones I specifically recommend:

Super Mana Potion, or the stacks-to-20 version, the Mana Potion Injector. Your basic mana potion; you will, at times, drink these like water. You can replace these with any of the alternatives I list in the linked post, of course. And if you’re raiding somewhere specific, don’t forget zone-specific potions like Bottled Nethergon Energy or Blue Ogre Brew as very cheap alternatives.

What about Super Rejuvenation Potions, or the Alchemist-only equivalent Mad Alchemist’s Potions? Carry one stack, but don’t use them unless you gotta. Remember that healing received will top up your mana via spiritual attunement, so if you’re healing yourself with a pot, that’s a lost opportunity for mana regen.

Obviously, don’t stint yourself on healing (self-heals, pots and healthstones) at the expense of other healers’ mana pools, but if there’s ambient healing available (Leader of the Pack, Vampiric Embrace, etc) and you’re not likely to take a big spike of damage you’re better off taking advantage of those to restore your health, and taking an ordinary mana potion instead.

Scrolls

These aren’t essential, as they don’t stack with player buffs, but they are handy for situations where rebuffing is unlikely (for instance, after receiving a battle-rez) or where you’re missing a particular buffing class from a raid (not uncommon in 10-mans). You can safely ignore Strength and Spirit scrolls, but scrolls of Intellect are always good for a boost to your mana pool. Scrolls of Stamina, Protection, and Agility can also be useful if you’re expecting to get hit.

Other ItemsNote that these all share a cooldown.

Demonic Rune – it’s only a small amount of mana restoration, but it’s enough for 5-8 Flash Heals (and causes you damage, thereby giving you the opportunity to regain mana via Spiritual Attunement). Demonic Runes drop from satyr demons in Azeroth (for instance, in Felwood and Azshara); Dark Runes are a BoE equivalent you can get from Scholo or the AH.

Charged Crystal Focus – available from the AH in their uncharged state, or farmed from mobs around the Ogri’la daily quest hub. Excellent for when you don’t have a healthstone handy; even if you buy it from the AH it’s likely to be cheaper than a repair bill.

Nightmare Seeds are gathered by Herbalists from Nightmare Vine nodes, but can be used by anyone. They’re on a separate 3-minute cooldown, and they’re useful for those moments where you need a health buffer to accommodate a damage spike without dying. Useful if the fight involves spiky raid damage (such as Naj’entus in Black Temple).

There are some profession-specific extras, as well: Fel Blossoms are good for herbalists, as a damage shield isn’t affected by healing reductions (from mortal-strike-y effects); Dense Stone Statues for Jewelcrafters heal you for 1250 healing across 25 ticks, but it counts as healing rather than ‘health restore’, so it does give you a small amount of mana back as well.

4 Comments

Comment by rev

Made Tuesday, 26 of August , 2008 at 5:43 am

Most raiding paladins consider Distilled Wisdom superior over mighty restoration because it actually gives you more if you factor in kings and bonuses gain from talents in a 6 minute boss fight. Restoration gives you back 300 mana per minute. Distilled wisdom gives you about 1k extra man plus spellcrit, healing. Restoration is really only better in really long boss fights over 10 minutes.

This is much the same as the debate over Mageblood vs Draenic Wisdom elixirs on the previous post. Using the same principles for decision-making as discussed there: a Flask of Distilled Wisdom = 65 Int, plus Kings = 71 Int. That equates to about 1K mana, 0.9% spell crit and 25 +heal.

The rate of mana return from spell crit obviously varies depending on your usual casting rotation, but with around 300ms latency (typical for Aussies, thus what I calculated on) and assuming near-constant chain-casting 1% spell crit ranges from around 3.5 mp5 (with 100% FoLs) to around 12.5 mp5 (with 100% HLs). For reference, with around 300ms latency and a 3 FoL : 1 HL ratio, 1% spell crit works out around 6.4 mp5.

So using that as the basis for calculation, 0.9% spell crit * 6.4 mp5 = about 5.8 mp5.

Given that paladins have very mana-efficient spells, a huge mana pool is less essential for them than other healer types, and they have very poor passive regen to boot. And most healers I know tend to feel that regen is more important than starting mana pool size – especially so for paladins who don’t have a “top me up!” cooldown like Innervate or Shadowfiend. I saw a nice saying on EJ once; “you only have full mana once: at the start of the fight”.

So I tend to feel that 25 mp5 from a regen flask is more useful than an extra 1k starting mana and 0.9% spellcrit. The +25 heal from the distilled wisdom flask is nice, but in terms of relative value, +25 mp5 is worth a lot more (in itemization value) than +25 heal and 0.9% spellcrit – which is no real surprise, as the Regen flask is a level 70 flask, and Distilled Wisdom is a level 60 flask.

If you feel you need to boost healing as well as regen, the Flask of Distilled Wisdom might be an option, but even then I suspect that you’re better off taking a Regen flask and then eating Golden Fishsticks instead of Blackened Sporefish and using Wizard Oil instead of Mana Oil.

Comment by rev

Made Saturday, 30 of August , 2008 at 5:02 am

Do some research you’ll see that a majority of SUNWELL raiding paladins will state that for fights 6 minutes and shorter distilled wisdom is better. Yes in long fights Mighty Restoration will be far better but the majority of the boss fights are short (With illidan/Illdari council being the only exceptions off the top of my head).

In 6 minutes Mighty restoration will Regen 1500 Mana, Distilled wisdom will net you 1125 Mana +27 healing, 1.09% spell crit. (78 Int 65+Kings+Divine Intellect) I agree having a huge mana pool isnt as good as having extra regen but what matters is your net mana gained from the flask and for short fights Distilled wisdom is better.

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